Guitar Circle Journals

Got up at 5:15, but was awake near 4:00.

Went swimming at 6:00. The pool wasn’t as crowded but at 6:30 there was a surge. Good work for me.

Cleaned out clothes I don’t use, to donate. Things along this line. Creating a vacuum, that is. Got some guitar practice in, too. That and swimming center me. Also, getting the team together for reading Creation.

Early afternoon I head out, pick up The Wife and we watch Avatar at the Imax in 3D. Very cool, like being immersed in a Roger Dean painting, for one thing.

Drove home and friends came over for a little bit of celebrating. 2009 went by fast and furiously. 2010 seems to be presenting an interesting set of possibilities.

Watched the full moon at 1:00 in the morning, clouds scudding underneath. Pretty!

So, last night after I finished work at 10:15 I get on the road. As I get north my car starts to do something weird. As I apply the gas the tachometer goes into the red zone but the car does not continue move. Eventually I have to pull over because the car comes to a stop. I try to put it in gear but again the car reves but does not move. I call AAA. I thought I was still on the Saw Mill River Pkwy. I come to realize that I had already pulled onto I- 684. So this cost me an hour of waiting. I call them back and tell them I made a mistake.  I finally get picked up at 12:30. I get home at 1:20.

This morning I called AAA again and had them move the car to the local mechanic I have been using. He called to tell me that there were metal filings coming out of the car and it looks like it’s the clutch. I tell him not to work on it as I had the clutch recently replaced. I call the other station were the car was repaired.  I go to budget rent a car to pick up a car I reserved on line last night. Now when I did this it said the price of the rental was $25.71 per day. When I got to the dealer he said it was $44.00 per day. I complained but given the current situation I had to take the car. I go home go on line and find out that they show you a price of 25.71 but when you choose this and order a reservation it changes to $44.00 without any notice.

I get a call back from the other station and he tells me the clutch was installed seven months ago.  I know that audi parts have a one year warranty.  I call sue at the station and she has a car to rent me for $25.00 a day.  Then she calls me back to tell me that she cannot release the car because it is snowing out and the roads have not been plowed. This apparently is a new insurance law.

I got a call from sue. I called a cab and went to pick up the rental car. I talk to Jay.( Jay by the way is Bob my best friends brother. They are twins that were born born three months apart.)  He tells me that although the clutch is only seven months old , Audi warranties parts for one year or 12,000 miles.  I have put 20,000 miles on my car in the last seven months. Which means this could be another $2000.00 repair. I don’t need this.

I then went to do some more purchases for the home. First stop was Home Goods. I found I need bowls and found four very attractive bowls. Now I don’t have to eat my morning oatmeal out of a plastic rubbermaid container. I also purchased an Ice cream scooper and found a really nice set of utensils. I am very picky about utensils. They need to had a certain weight and a particular  balance when holding them . These really fit the bill.

Next Bed Bath and Beyond to get a drawer insert to hold the utensils. I also purchase a rubbermaid container to hold my oatmeal.

Next Stop & Shop to buy vegetables for my juicing and some steak & yams for dinner. They also had good looking pomagranites. I got two. Back home to unload. I called my friend Roy and he asked if I had plans for tomorrow. I said I did not. He invited me to an open house celebration tomorrow. I thanked him and said I’d be there. I then went to Yorktown liquors to by wine to bring tomorrow and three more bottles me. Cabernet, Pinot Noir & Chianti.

Back home and do more cleaning. I cook dinner and have pinot noir. I’m listening to Radiohead In Rainbows and Sharon Jones 100 days, 100 nights.

Posting at 8:00 I might wake at 12:00 to see the ball drop.

In a fuss this morning, so much to do, and then from 10, it just zipped by. The missions, the hardware, plans. Lunch on the Avenue. Swimming and then to PB’s place for a guitar meeting.

Getting a strange feeling of liberation and relief embarking upon rythmic excercises in E major.

I hurry after our meeting to the only shop that would be open, for nothign will be tomorrow.

The temperature has dropped again (it seemed almost warm yesterday). I have all the stuff for the shelves, but now, at 21h it seems a bit un neighbourly to get out the black and decker. So I’ll tidy, and do that later.

Early night, unless composition strikes.

Actualy, 2 samba evenings and a dinner were proposed to me for tonight… and yet I don’t really care for it. And then I feel bad that I don’t. The Zeitgeist has got me by the ankles. I may still yet dart out of the appartement before 23h…. then again, sofa and book and some grooves on the hifi…

The day begins early, like yesterday. My plans for a perfect morning are thwarted by many factors. Life could be much, much worse. The biggest surprise factor was the drive into work. Snow was falling, more than we had been led to expect, and the temperature was right at 32 F. In other words, we were right on the split between freezing and not-freezing. The roads were as slippery as I’ve ever experienced them, my vehicle hasn’t felt so out-of-control in about 14 years, and I saw more accidents, including one that must have been fatal, on the road than I have seen in a long time. Sobering.

I called the Chief Hellboy and canceled our meeting for the morning. Hellboys Rule, but Mother Nature is a fearsome enemy.

I’ve been using this journal to review the previous nine months, as part of my year-in-review. It was interesting to discover one particular event that is recorded for April 2009, but which my memory otherwise placed in the autumn of 2008. Oops.

This year, in my immediate circle, many deaths and births.

Clear some space in the morning, on the way to sorting out the last bastions of chaos and ordering them.

There is the… music pile (all mixed up), the stationary pile (all blank notebooks and such), the bizness pile (stuff i really should look at, NOW) and the decoration pile. There is also lots of trash. I also found my diary for Lunlunta 2004. Now that was interesting. One of my stated aims at that course is only now becoming a reality.

I am listening to Demonios de Garoa… a group whose every song, almost, begins with a vocal noise akin to “Quash” repeated in different pitches. Very fine signature. Interestingly, the couple I met on the train from London on Sunday, well her great great uncle was the founder of this group, thought at the time I didn’t put it all together.

Unfortunately they did not show up on Monday night as mentioned.

Guitar practice for 1 hour and half an hour. Another Nonap, and then up and out and about; some food and rain and visit to hardware shops, planning shelves.

Return empty handed, and then head out to G’s Birthday dinner.

The chinese lady reopened the flower shop just for me. This was nice. But then I felt obliged to buy an expensive arrangement.

… an evening in La Réunion (a restaurant, with flavours of the islands).

Tired.

The end of the year nears, as if with the sound of a roaring wind. While technically, there is nothing I have to do, there are lots of things necessary and obligatory to deal with. And then there’s fun with puzzles of a logical sort, and how this relates to programming and writing proofs.

The new book with writings by Mr. Beer came in the post, Saturday. I’ve read just a bit, it’s in the list of things.

I took a slow beginning to the day, I just needed to time to remember breathing without effort. I took care of some chores and the day’s job. Then I went to campus to print some programming tutorials to try out. Then to the post office, where after 2 minutes in line I realized I’d left my wallet (hence means of payment) out in the car, though I did get to drop some letters into the post. Back at the car, I realized the package would wait until a later day.

So to the swimming pool. While taking the wet-down shower I noticed one guy scurrying past and not taking a shower (not proper form dude) but with a smug look at me. So I get out and the lanes are all filled, Mr. Smug taking that last lane with his wife. Well. The first shall be last. Me, I just went back out, got on an elliptical machine for 20 minutes and prayed for 20 minutes for the willingness to forgive smugness. The willingness didn’t arrive quite that quickly. I do have a solution of showing up much earlier, especially on days before holidays.

So, then I moved on to the bank to deposit a check, gassing up the car, washing the car, and getting groceries. This all went a bit smoother and put things back into perspective for me.

The “material question” continues to put a seemingly unsolvable puzzle in front of me.

The Applied Reading Circle will be reading Creation, the third volume in the Studies from The Dramatic Universe series, beginning Sunday.

I continue to think about various circles (of fifths, of thirds, of 12 tones [the tone clock]) and triangulated tori (triangles representing a trichord).

An ongoing process of mourning seems to have returned this week. My sense is that this connected to the end of the year. My days are busy enough that I don’t have much time or attention for it until near the very end of the day.

The day has been appropriately productive. I set my rise time 15 minutes earlier than usual, and therefore had a little extra time for personal practice. Recycling was completed despite the very cold weather.

Two pieces of wisdom came from my wife yesterday. One was encouragement to meet with someone today. The other pointed out a flaw in my thinking on a particular topic. Regarding the latter, she said, “‘Who cares?’ is not usually part of your vocabulary.” I am reformulating this as “When the words ‘Who cares?’ come out of my mouth, they are to be taken as a warning sign.”

There were many days in the last many months where I decided it would be a good idea to begin journalizing again. One of them was on the 13th of October. I visited the American consulate early in the morning, and also collected my new ID card from the Prefecture de Police, took some sunny pictures of Notre Dame on my phone, and felt generally positive, with RF playing in town that very night and my mother visiting. The fact that my soon to be ex girlfriend was getting me down didn’t even touch me. I would have put the pictures of notre dam on the web, but then I lost my phone in New York, where I played the Village Halloween parade with Samba New York. Primeiro Surdo in the Rain. And that was another day I might have had the impulse to begin journals. Or a week later, going to the Bill Viola show.

Or on another day, when … actually, coincidence that I just mentioned him, I walked live through a Bill Viola installation. And I was reminded of it today. In the station St Lazare, underneath, for getting to the metros, a big place they call the Cour de Rome. Many stair cases and escalators. And the ever present voice of a man selling papers. When he calls out it is hard to make out what it is. It sounds a bit like a foghorn. A definite tone. Maybe a word (I mean yes, but it is not obvious). I was there today, and he was there. But a number of weeks ago, imagine this early morning scene….

Someone has fallen. This is not funny, he or she had perhaps fallen down stairs to his or her death. It was strange. Stairs were blocked off as a result and all the morning rush hour was going very slowly around and down the cour de rome on these spiral cases, toward the hall where the foghorn called out in an eery melody. At the bottom of an empty staircase a patient on the ground with coloured emergency jackets and stretchers, and a crowd milling. The foghorn kept on calling. The people kept turning round, and then in the middle, a couple going different directions and so saying good bye for eht day were turning in a sort of slow tango. I tell you it was all very strange, that morning, in the cour de rome. I should have written about it. It was the 3rd of December or so. But even today that hall echoed of that day. It is the crier’s voice more than anything.

Morning : Too late crashing yesrerday meant headache and no relief from the cold which is lurking nearby. The kingdom of the cold is within you… archg, so it is. And the heater, which was too cold, is now to hot… that contributes to my headache which contributes to nothing good.

The day begins thus, it’s already a mess.

I get seriously annoyed by 3 things in the morning. 1 is those websites that gather info, and so appear in search listings for the the thing you are looking for (a business, a song lyric, whatever)… but in fact they have no more info than you, and the page is just a reference to the same thing with the details still not filled in … and if you are the owner of this business, or if you know the lyrics to this song… why not contribute to their page. Why not, indeed… pff

The other thing was on the phone to the cpam going through a number of choices… only to get to the message, about 6 choices in that they were unable to take the call… try back later!

I go to the swimming pool… and the “box-office” is once again closed. When I am ready to pay, it is closed; when I go not expecting to pay (because it is usually closed)… I get persecuted for assuming I can swim for free.

I get a free bike across the street and go to the cpam. There I have not taken a book… I get number 115 and they are on 103…. arg. I practice waking up.

I ride back home. I like my neighborhood, along the Rue Cardinet.

Then I do go swimming, and get annoyed with two miscreants in the vestiare, obviously just waiting to steal stuff.

But my swim is short, because I have to go to Philippe’s place. Actually, I am using the local swimming pool a lot at the moment.

Off to Philippe’s place (hence passing by St Lazare).

We discuss and work on guitars.

Leonardo exercise, anchor exercise plus extension, then some work on the new scale exercises we are coming up with (D, Dm, C, E). Caliope, Hope, Vroom, EOTN. We worked 2 and a half hours straight. To be continued in 48 hours.

On home turf I eat a stuffed aubergine on the avenue… and then lose lots of time into the internet (conversations, blog reading, mails… craigslist).

iPodius plays on in the back ground.

And this morning, a definite resistance to the weekly schedule. Perhaps this conforms with law, perhaps this is habit, perhaps this is human nature. I set myself an agenda for the week, and the “fatal” flaw is that I left no “wiggle room”. No room for anything to go off-course, no room for surprise, no room for the unexpected. Ah-ha. So this morning I noticed something in the house that needs quick repair and I began to panic (mildly) because I can’t imagine when I’ll have the time to do it. More significantly, I don’t know how I’ll do it, so I don’t know how long it will take, so now I really don’t know when I’ll have the time to do it.

The weather is very cold and very windy.

This morning I  posted something and then decided it was too personal for these pages so, I pulled it.

My intention is try and get through today as best I can.

Today turned out to be day two where I had to wear a jacket  - 18 degees with a wind chill of 1 degree.

Also got an email from a former student regarding C Major.  I have my ovation at work and this was helpful to review fingerings, tetra chords ect.